


Westward, Sea-Green

by Talullah



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works
Genre: Easterlings, F/M, Female-Centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-06 18:32:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4232334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talullah/pseuds/Talullah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brodda's first bride tells her story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Westward, Sea-Green

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [](http://maglor-20.livejournal.com/profile)[**maglor_20**](http://maglor-20.livejournal.com/)'s [Easterlings Appreciation Week](http://maglor-20.livejournal.com/94064.html), three weeks too late, and with a bad Easterling (and a good one!), implied rape and abortion. Not my usual fare, but hey. :P
> 
> Goland – female Mongolian name taken from <http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/jessica-bonner/mongolwomen.html>
> 
> [Disclaimer/Blanket Statement](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Talullah/profile)

I was once promised to Brodda. He was handsome, tall, strong, and from a good family. What more could a girl have wanted? My father was especially pleased with the skill my mother had shown in negotiating the match with his mother. I was not a bad match at all either. Our family was older and more influential than Brodda’s but his father was wealthier than mine. It was a fair match and Bór, our liege, was pleased that a girl from his tribe would marry a man from Ulfgang’s tribe. He said it was good that we all became kin, to be closer.

For many months I anticipated our wedding. My mother and my sisters planned incessantly the wedding feast and we all worked together in the embroidery of my wedding dress and the beading of my headpiece. My father bought glass beads from the elves, of a strange green they said was the colour of the sea I had never seen. There were also beads in azure, crimson and viridian. It became a thing of beauty that all the girls of our tribe would come by to admire in the afternoons, as we sipped scalding black tea and ate poppy seed buns with honey.

Those were good times. We had always been nomadic, but within our own routes, far in the dry, cold East. We had come West with some trepidation, many of us fearing what might these elves bring, but it had been fine. We were happy. Our children were well-fed. In the distance, a shadow lurked, and sooner or later our men would go to war for these elves. We did not fear it too much. The elves looked invincible in their intricate armors and were liberal with armament and fighting lessons. It was while we were setting camp outside Hithlum that we had first met Brodda and his father.

My father was very happy with the goats and horses he would get for me, but he was a good father and he was happier even that they had found me a good husband. See, Brodda was considered some sort of a hero in his tribe, as he never came home empty-handed from his hunting. We were all shepherds, more than hunters, and his ways with the bow were quite impressive.

Our wedding was postponed, on the account of the impending war. I was not worried, for Brodda claimed to be a man of honour. We would be married, sooner than later. What sweet words he had when he would ride up from Thargelion to Himring with his father, and we would met by the creek that separated our camps, while his father conducted Ulfang’s business with Bór and with the elves. My youngest brother would come after me, clinging to my skirt to keep my honour. I could see in his eyes how much he loved me. The day he stole a kiss when my brother was distracted by a stray dog, my heart almost leapt out of my chest.

The marching orders came and the men followed the Lord Maedhros. I was almost glad that the war would finally come. Our men would win it swiftly and easily and we would finally be at peace and free to start families.

Instead, there was death. Ulfgang, the cursed fool, led us into the hands of the Dark Lord, into the most abject thralldom. The women and children of our tribe were left behind at the mercy of his vile creatures. We were loyal to Bór and him to Maedhros and thus, we were fair game for slavery.

When Brodda rode in, he gathered us like cattle and led us further East, to Hithlum. He did not look at me in the eye, not when he ordered me into his tent, not when he ripped my dress open, not when he knocked me down. He did not seem to remember that my name was Goland and that I was his promised bride. The next day, when he allowed me to leave the tent for water, my eye was swollen shut, and I could not walk without wincing. My mother had to hold my little brother back, as he screamed words of revenge. During the long journey, I stole what I could from Brodda and gave it to them, so that they could escape south.

When we did arrive to our cursed destination, Brodda took my wedding dress and my headpiece, and gave them to the white woman. Aerin. Aerin! I hated her name, her skin, her hair, the space she took up with her presence. His Lordship Brodda and his precious wife. I was filled with hate for them both. I was also filled with child.

My dress was too short for her. I had to lower the hem with my own hands. Did she even realize whose dress it was? She seemed to be absent. I wish I could escape like that, into my own head. She was dragged before the town and the wedding was celebrated. There were bruises in her wrists and later that day, there was a sheet with blood. I wondered if it had come just from her cut lip. She suffered too, but I still hated her.

My baby was born in her house, where I had been promised to be mistress. It took me many months to love it, but the little boy did not care if hatred poured with his mother’s milk. Aerin was kind, in her detached way. I kept wondering about her. Had she always been like that, or was that alienation her own way to rebel against Brodda?

The years passed. She never bore him a child. I once saw her collecting angelica roots. Later that week she came down with an unexplained illness. I was ordered to tend to her. I did it gladly. Her womb spat out Brodda’s child and I kept her secret, as I gave her willow bark tea for the shattering pain she felt. We did not become friends - her only friend was that other strange woman, and I had no heart left for friendship - but she always gave my son preference, over the sons of the other concubines'.

* * *

I ran to the house too late. She was already aflame when I saw her at the window. Her hair seemed like a crown made of sun pieces and her beautiful white face contorted with pain. Her eyes, however, remained cool, in that sea-green that I would only ever see again at the end of my life, as I followed my son and his wife westward, to the shore, away from our persecutors. The water scared me, with its vastness, but it also reminded me, in a way, of the steppes of my youth. We should have never have come west.

 _Finis_  
_June 2015_


End file.
